


Glass, Like Promises

by chaosmanor



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:14:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosmanor/pseuds/chaosmanor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick's love is not unconditional</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass, Like Promises

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fic), [fob](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/fob), [glass like promises](http://chaosmanor.dreamwidth.org/tag/glass+like+promises)  
  
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Title: Glass, Like Promises  
Author: [](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/profile)[**chaosmanor**](http://www.insanejournal.com/users/chaosmanor/)  
Rating: Explicit  
Summary: Patrick's love is not unconditional  
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.

Even the kitchen wasn't really safe from the noise, but it would have to do. Patrick took a bottle of water out of the fridge and hitched himself up onto a counter, beside the carton of canned dog food. Through the window over the sink, in the solar lights edging the back yard, he could see Hemmy industriously digging up the lawn. That's it. Concentrate on something ordinary. Do something ordinary.

Patrick elbowed aside a kitchen appliance he didn't recognize and couldn't identify, and leaned back against the tiles. Between the cool ceramic on his back and the condensation from the water bottle against his face, he might manage not to lose it completely.

Drink the water. That was an ordinary thing to do.

The water bottle crashed against the door.

Okay, that hadn't worked.

He got as far as his car, vision tunneling, each step like a nightmare chase sequence, the monsters closer and closer, but his hands wouldn't work the fucking remote, and he gave up and sat down against the front bumper. Just until he could breathe, or move, or something.

Knees appeared, and a weight settled on the hood of the car, bare feet beside Patrick's shoulder, nudging him.

"Is that it?" Pete asked. "I say, oh yeah, I'm going to be a daddy, and you trash my kitchen and leave? Is that it?"

Patrick took a deep breath, and hauled himself up onto the hood, which set off the motion detector on his car. Once he'd found the remote again and disarmed the alarm, he said, "No, that's not it."

Pete lived in a decent neighborhood, genteel and leafy, and Patrick stared at the line up of SUVs in the driveway across from Pete's, rear lights reflecting the light spilling out through the night from Pete's house. Pete could wait, or he could fuck off.

Pete waited.

"I'm not going near the issue of whether you're a suitable person to be a parent," Patrick said. "Or why you thought it would be a good idea to procreate with someone who was actually more narcissistic than you are. Or what the baby will grow up like, with a combination of characteristics from you and from her. I'm just hoping that someone sane steps in and insists that you hire staff who live on the same planet as the rest of us."

"Hired help," Pete said. "Nannies, that sort of thing."

"I'm more interested in the circumstances of conception. So, did the pair of you decide you were so in love you were going to commit to being together for two years, or ten years, or forever? And did you decide to express that love through creating a child?" Patrick asked. "Or was this an accident?"

He looked at Pete, for the first time since Pete had casually announced impending paternity. Pete was hunched over, arms around his ribs, his face hidden behind his hair, and he didn't say anything.

"I'll take that as 'accident', then?" Patrick said, and Pete nodded. "Now, this is where I started throwing appliances around. Get your fucking hair off your face, Pete."

Pete pushed his bangs behind his ear, and he looked terrified, but Patrick had no intention of stopping, not until there was blood on the driveway, or he knew the fucking truth.

"What happened?" Patrick asked. "And don't you dare lie to me. This is me, Patrick, and I will know if you lie."

Pete shrugged. "You know," he said. "A condom failed."

Patrick slid off the hood, to stand in front of the car, and Pete. "There are two kinds of failing. There's failing, where you pull out and there're shredded bits of latex stuck to your dick, and you go and get PEP. And there's failing, where the condom is still in the packet."

Pete's throat worked, as he swallowed, and he nodded.

"We have a contract," Patrick said. "There's a contract, in a safety deposit box in Chicago. We signed it, with our mothers as witnesses, after…"

Pete met Patrick's gaze, for the first time, and he said, "Stop. You don't have to say it. I know we have a contract."

It felt like the rage had dropped away, and been replaced by an icy calm, but Patrick knew that was an illusion, and that he was still furiously angry with Pete.

"What does the contract say?" Patrick asked. "Or do you need me to tell you?"

Pete blinked, his eyelashes clumping together, and yeah, Patrick's heart was breaking too, but Pete had known for weeks and weeks that this was coming.

"It says that your love for me is not unconditional," Pete said. "It says that you will love me as long as I do or don't do certain things. I have to tell you, or my mom, or a doctor, if I think I'm getting depressed or if I'm suicidal. I have to take medication, if it's prescribed. I have to not engage in self harm behaviors."

"And was there a list of behaviors attached?" Patrick asked, and Pete nodded. "This list was not a definitive list, because I didn't think I could possibly imagine all the ways you could harm yourself, but it covered the broad options. This contract of ours, however, does specifically require you to have safe sex, because I was sure that I didn't want you destroying yourself by fucking the entire world without latex."

Pete was crying, tears streaking down his face, and he nodded.

The front door of Pete's house opened, and Joe looked out, but he must have worked out that Patrick was disemboweling Pete or something, because he closed the door again.

"Get off my car," Patrick said. "So I can leave."

Pete slid off the hood, stumbling off the driveway, to stand shaking on the weed-filled lawn, beside Joe's car.

"Have a nice life," Patrick said. "Don't bother inviting me to the wedding."

He opened his car door, climbed in, and Pete shouted, "It was supposed to be you! I was supposed to be marrying you!"

Patrick slammed his car door shut, and mimed stabbing himself in the heart, at Pete.

His phone started ringing, before he'd got more than two streets away. At the first set of lights, he checked the screen. Missed calls from Pete. Messages from Pete. Then missed calls from Joe. And Andy. And then random numbers.

Pete was thorough.

And Patrick was through.

The adrenaline crash was ugly, smashing Patrick into fragments, leaving him sitting on the floor of his apartment, looking at the wreckage of his life. His plan, and it was a simple one, was to pack up the essentials and get on a plane to somewhere else. Possibly not Chicago and home, since no doubt Pete would follow him there.

Working out what was essential was harder. Guitars, yeah, in the apartment. Did he have any other instruments in LA? At Pete's house. He could leave anything there behind. Pete might destroy things, but Patrick would get over it.

He needed to pack up the layer of scribbled notes and sheets of loose leaf paper spread across the entire apartment. And some clothes. And his laptop. And email their manager to arrange for someone to come in and pack up the rest of the apartment.

Looking at his email was a huge mistake; he should have known better.

_Please, please. I have to see you, I can explain…_

Patrick changed the settings on his email program, to bounce emails from Pete, and deleted all the unread emails without looking at them.

"Fuck you," Patrick said. He shut down his laptop, left his cell phone off, and unplugged the landline, which had been ringing steadily.

Why had there been nothing in the contract about Patrick having to call someone if he wanted to hurt himself?

Patrick went to bed, where there were no sharp objects.

He must have slept, because the smashing of glass startled him awake, bolt upright in the darkened room, the digital alarm clock besides the bed poisonous in the night. Four in the morning, and someone had just shattered a window in his apartment. Patrick knew exactly who it would be, because double-locking the front door had not been enough of a hint, obviously.

"I don't think there's much point in trying to be quiet now," he called out, finding his glasses in the dark.

"Fuck you!" Pete called back. "Why give me the key to your place if you're just going to bolt the door so I can't use it?"

Patrick lay back down and pulled a pillow over his head. "It's a clue, you fucker," he said, his voice muffled.

"I thought you'd be gone," Pete said, his voice much closer, and when Patrick lifted the pillow up, Pete was a silhouette standing in the door way, shaking what Patrick had to assume were pieces of glass out of his clothes and hair.

"And that makes smashing my window acceptable?" Patrick asked.

Pete shrugged. "Yeah, well, at least you wouldn't have known about it."

"You got something to say?" Patrick asked. "Or are you just here to fuck things up more?"

"I've got nothing," Pete said, his voice hollow bravado. "I was going to be all weird, in your empty apartment."

Patrick reached out, to turn on the light beside his bed, but Pete must have moved fast, because a hand grabbed his, and Pete said, "Fuck, not the light."

Patrick could smell the metallic tang of blood, in the darkness, and he asked, "You're bleeding?"

"Yeah."

Pete knelt down, beside Patrick's bed, amongst the mess that Patrick had been unable to deal with a few hours before, and it was all so deeply symbolic that Patrick almost laughed, only it wouldn't have come out as a laugh.

Pete buried his face in the bedding, and the liquid green light from the alarm clock reached him, so Patrick could see his shoulders shaking, as well as feel the movement through the mattress. Patrick reached out an unsteady hand and stroked Pete's hair, gentling him.

"I've got no words, either," Patrick admitted.

"What the fuck am I going to do?" Pete asked, turning his head, and the blood smeared on his face was chocolate in the green light.

Patrick leaned forward, hunching down, and pressed his lips against Pete's forehead. "I don't know, babe," he whispered.

Pete clambered onto the bed, all elbows and knees, and Patrick wrapped his arms around him. They hung onto each other, then Pete's mouth was against Patrick's, flickering kisses.

"Please," Pete whispered, and Patrick groaned and kissed Pete back.

They rolled over, in a tangle of blankets and legs, so Patrick was over Pete, holding him down, hands in Pete's hair, mouths glued together, Pete moaning and clawing back.

No point in denying he wanted this, no way of pulling back, not with Pete yanking at his T-shirt, scratching at his back, blood roaring in his ears, sliding across Pete's skin, so much pain twisted around so much love.

One of Pete's hands grabbed Patrick's ass, through his boxers, and Pete flung his other arm out, reaching desperately for the drawer of the night stand. "Fuck, quickly," Pete hissed.

"Get your clothes off," Patrick said, sliding off the bed and tossing his glasses on the night stand, then dragging his T-shirt over his head.

Patrick found the condoms and lube by touch alone, then Pete was right there, against him in the darkness, pulling them both back onto the bed.

It took two goes to get a condom on in the dark, then Pete took the lube off him, and Patrick groaned as Pete slid a handful of slippery, cool lube over his cock.

"I can't see you," Pete complained, when Patrick knelt over him.

"Don't worry," Patrick said. "You're about to feel me."

They both gasped, at the first touch, then a moment later, Patrick said, "Fuck, babe. When'd you get so tight?"

"Almost a virgin again," Pete whispered. "Come on, give me all of it."

Patrick didn't, not all at once. He eased in slowly, carefully, just for the sheer fucking joy of listening to Pete groaning and feeling him thrashing on the bed, trying desperately to hurry Patrick up.

Pete was babbling, by the time Patrick was all the way in, making outrageous promises, so Patrick kissed him hard, stopping the stream of words, then said, "Shut the fuck up. We both know you'll say anything when you're being fucked."

"Then fuck me," Pete growled.

Patrick pulled back slowly, slid back in, just as slowly, kept doing it, over and over, while Pete gasped and moaned, because all the time they were fucking, Pete was safe: they both were safe.

"I want to do this forever," Patrick said, and Pete sobbed and shoved a hand between their bellies, grabbing for his own cock, jerking his knuckles across Patrick's skin. Patrick held still, held his breath while Pete came, mouths together.

Pete fell back on the mattress, liquid and silent, and Patrick rolled his hips slowly, rocking his cock into Pete, his hands clutching at the mattress, his breath raw and loud.

"I'm not stopping," Patrick said. "Not until you tell me to."

"Then roll over," Pete said.

Light was creeping into the room, around the edge of the blinds, and even without his glasses on, Patrick could see Pete hovering over him. He could feel Pete, too, every fucking nerve-ending in his body screaming at him, so far beyond merely turned on that everything in the universe had coalesced down to where his cock was jammed so hard into Pete's ass that they might never manage to separate again.

He didn't want to come, he wanted to hold out, but his fucking body wasn't going to let him, not when the sparks started at the soles of his feet, uncurling right up his spine, and Pete was bending forward, biting his neck, begging him to come.

Patrick grabbed Pete's waist, dragging Pete down harder, working himself in deeper, and the heat kept building, until it all flew apart, leaving him shouting, coming his fucking brains out.

"Fuck," Pete whispered, and he lifted himself off Patrick carefully. "I should have got you really angry years ago."

Patrick blinked, but his brain was in no state to deal with that statement, not right then. Then Pete pulled the condom off him and leaned forward and sucked his cock clean, and his brain was in no state for anything.

"My turn," Pete said, tossing the condom across the room and fishing through the bedding for the strip of unused condoms.

In the early morning sunlight, the whole room was an impressionistic blur, shifting blocks of color, and Patrick gave up trying to see, or make sense of anything, closing his eyes and surrendering, letting Pete's fingers coax him, twist him.

In the empty space after coming, Pete was everything, kneeling over him, hair whispering against his face, pushing into him, and Patrick fell apart in increments, each successive slow twist of Pete's hips taking him further than he'd ever been before.

Pete's mouth tasted of fresh blood, his lip slick and swollen, when Patrick kissed him, but Pete's hands were gentle on Patrick's face, and it seemed to Patrick that Pete was completely present for the first time in a long time, that he was really there, not hiding, or ducking and weaving.

"Promise me you'll talk to me?" Patrick said. "When we can breathe again."

"Yeah," Pete said, "but I gotta come first, because I'm dying here."

Patrick grabbed Pete's hair, jerking his head back. "Then fuck me."

Pete grinned. "Thought you'd never ask." Pete grabbed one of Patrick's knees, dragging his leg out of the way, then fucking climbed inside Patrick the hard way, jabbing, fucking and clawing, both of them yelling.

It took work, to get a hand between their bellies, but Patrick managed to get hold of his own cock. This was good, because by the look on Pete's face, Pete wasn't going to be remembering to do it any time soon, and fuck, Patrick could understand that, because Pete was fucking going for it, shoving Patrick up the bed so his head was scrunched against the headboard.

Pete's skin was slick with sweat, against Patrick's, as wet as his mouth was against Patrick's ear as he gasped, "C'mon, Patrick, come for me. C'mon, c'mon."

It hurt, everything hurt, it all hurt. Coming hurt, with Pete fucking him so hard, and it was fucking awful afterwards, his ass burning and raw, leg muscles cramping, throat raw from shouting. Then Patrick found his glasses, and managed to get a look at Pete in the daylight.

"Fuck," Patrick said, picking up Pete's hand, where it lay limp on Patrick's chest. "Fuck, you're cut to pieces."

"Can't fuck again," Pete said, his voice distant. "Not for hours. Not a fucking chance. Get some sleep, then we can fuck."

Patrick propped himself up on one elbow and looked at the pair of them. Pete's hands and arms were gouged and cut, with fresh blood still seeping from the cuts, and both of them were streaked with dried blood. They looked like they'd wrecked a car, not their lives.

"Stop," Pete said, pulling Patrick back down again. "It's just a few cuts. You should see the window, though. It's in much worse shape,"

"Talk to me," Patrick said.

"What is there to say?" Pete said, his mouth against Patrick's shoulder. "It's always been you, but you know that."

"We tried that," Patrick said. "You lasted a couple of months."

"Yeah," Pete said. "That's me--constitutionally incapable of not fucking around. Give me something precious, and I gotta break it open to see how it works. Look how well my latest attempt at monogamy has gone."

"I have to say, it's a pleasant being the other person, for a change," Patrick said. "Rather than the lover you've left at home."

"What do you think I should do?" Pete asked.

"Go back to your girl, and the baby. Do more therapy. Next time I'm in Chicago, I'll tear up the contract. Let's find out if you've worked out how to stay alive."

He slid his arm out from under Pete and climbed off the end of the bed.

"Where are you going?" Pete asked, propping himself up.

"To call one of the many people who are looking for you and tell them you're here with me, and then have a shower and pack up what I need to take with me."

The living area of the apartment was a fucking mess, with broken glass spread across the carpet and couch, the blind rattling in the breeze, and Pete's blood in handprints down the wall. Patrick shook his head and switched on his cell phone. Talking to anyone was too hard, so he texted Andy--who was not crazy--asking him to collect Pete in an hour.

His phone rang instantly, and Patrick switched it off again.

Behind him, Pete said, "Fuck, sorry, that's a horrible mess."

"What did you use?" Patrick asked.

"My phone," Pete said apologetically. "But, you know, glass is tougher than tech. So then I tried a rock."

Patrick shrugged. "I'm going to shower, before you break anything else."

In the bathroom, Pete opened the shower stall door and climbed under the water with Patrick. He wound his arms around Patrick's neck, and they kissed, and yeah, Patrick was sad, but it was a good sadness, like he wasn't drowning anymore.

Pete waited while Patrick turned the water off, then he leaned against the tiles, scratched and gouged and washed clean. "Does this mean you love me unconditionally again?"

Patrick slid the shower stall door open and reached for a towel. "I always did."

 

END


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